


En Pointe

by TLvop



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post-Canon, Yuletide 2008, ballet metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-17
Updated: 2011-05-17
Packaged: 2017-10-19 12:42:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/200955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLvop/pseuds/TLvop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rue and the problem of 'happily ever after'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	En Pointe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Paceus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paceus/gifts).



Rue knows there is pain in beauty: Rue wears toe shoes.

And Rue knows that this dance is beautiful indeed. Here, outside of reality, in the strange un-country of the story's ending, that takes shape beneath their fingertips and their graceful, calloused feet. This no-place, this nothing, is so beautiful. It is not dead but not yet alive, coiled and ready and unborn.

Her Mytho--no, Siegfried--her Prince dips her by surprise in the gray and she laughs, delighted.

He smiles, startled and dignified but sincere. "I love you," he tells her, with no prompting at all and Rue feels her heart warm.

"I love you too," she whispers, and knows it to be true.

~*~

When her Prince is away from her--travelling, searching--the land grows dark. In her nightmare thoughts she thinks it malicious, rejecting her and wishing her ill. Then she recalls herself and tells herself not to be strange: this is the Prince's land, and her Prince loves her.

They are lonely. They have a people, they know that, but they are not yet here: they were never created. The land does not know itself without them, and her Prince seems lost. He speaks of them with an uncertain wrinkle on his brow. He remembers that he loves them; he remembers that he broke his heart for them, but he does not remember their faces or their names.

That's fine, Rue tells herself. They have each other. And they will find their people.

~*~

They find him on a pier overtop of a pond, a fishing rod set by the side of his chair, a book in his hand. A duck quacks loudly and he looks over to see them. They are strangely out of place in the real world.

The bright sun of this place -- her home, she reminds herself, startled -- blinds Rue's eyes. Was it ever this bright before? The un-country is misty and grey. The talk of the people in the park distracts her as Fakir says "Your Highness," and rises to bow.

The Prince laughs, lordly but kind and bows back-- matching his depth. "Fakir."

"You need me?" the knight asks, gaze following where Rue's has fallen to the duck quacking at her earnestly by the pier.

"The land does not stay solid," says her Prince, solemn, "and we cannot find our people."

"Ahiru?" Rue exclaims, falling to her knees in the fine dress she is wearing, picking the duck out of the water carefully in her cupped hands. "Fakir, why didn't you fix her?"

She glances up, and his face is angry and dark. "She isn't broken, moron," he snaps. "And I can't."

~*~

They stay there for a week, at Fakir's house with his father. Charon is so glad to see her Prince and she that he almost doesn't notice their changes. Fakir's mechanical chirruping little sister is gone, disappeared the day they left, but Ahiru follows him wherever he goes.

They sleep in the room that was once Mytho's. Or at least Siegfried does, face buried in his old pillow. The sounds of the street keep Rue awake all of the first night, foreign with their familiarity and their reminder of lives that don't touch her own. Her Prince shifts and wakes, fuzzily pulling her close to him. Her throat is tight with the thought of this outside-world, feeling like it's composed half of terror and half of excitement.

She cannot remember when she was last excited.

~*~

Fakir has said the past three days that he cannot do it, but Rue was listening to his stories and mulling them quietly. Rue has ideas.

"What about the people who lost their endings?" she asks, finally, into the quiet room. "Where did they go?"

Her Prince and his knight exchange a look, and Ahiru's head rises up to watch.

Fakir falters, uncertain. The books with their endings finished but destroyed, what happens to the people? Do their characters end like Kinkan town, stuck without any means of recourse?

The short answer is: No.

The long answer is: Kind of.

Rue does research with Fakir in the libraries, Ahiru marching between their books and peering into them one after another.

Her Prince looks for them in the town. He has more luck than they do; stories are drawn to him naturally as the Prince in ways they were never drawn to poor unfinished Mytho.

But it was Rue's idea.

~*~

This is what happens: stories with endings that have been destroyed faintly remember them.

They don't have the teeth and claws of stories truly unwound, but instead they drift faintly between the crowds, attracted to those like them.

They hitchhike, for a time, like Mytho's heart shards but not as noticeable, nor any of them as strong. They are faint glimmers of ideas, character-ghosts, and they are drawn to the bright light of the Prince.

He extends his hand, and asks them to be his people. She has not seen one who was reluctant to agree.

Her Prince is their Prince, she doesn't begrudge them that. Her Prince is their Prince, but she is his Princess. And what soul who saw his light could turn away?

~*~

They find them all, the story-shards, the future citizens of their land. Fakir seems relieved. He watches her Prince with sad, angry eyes. Rue thinks that he wishes the Prince was Mytho, and she is angry at him for it. If he truly loved Mytho, he would see that Siegfried is who Mytho was always supposed to, always longed to, be.

She is angry in part because sometimes she misses her gentle, needy, obscure, predictable Prince too. Siegfried does not need her; she must rely on his word that he loves her, and his honor that he will not abandon her. That is hard.

~*~

Ahiru quacks loudly at them as they prepare to leave, and Rue picks her up, kissing her softly on her feathered head.

The Prince takes her from Rue's hand, gently, and considers her. "Princess Tutu," he says, voice soft and echoing with old reverence. "Will you come with us?"

Rue's breath catches in her throat, and she thinks the only one more worried is Fakir.

Princess Tutu deserves a life in a story with them, she has earned it. But she, Rue who was Kraehe, is his Princess and she does not think there can be two.

Ahiru stares up at him with wide eyes, and then nuzzles her head against his hand with a quiet "quack." She turns and flies to land on Fakir's shoulder.

Siegfried catches Fakir's eye, and gives a half bow. Fakir turns his head to the side, and dips it in return.

They leave.

~*~

What Rue does not know:

Fakir asked her Prince to invite Ahiru. Ducks do not live long in the real world, and he doesn't have the power to change her back into a girl.

Later, after they leave, he says "Moron."

Ahiru quacks in his ear, cheerful.

~*~

Their land grew and firmed though it still had a soft edge to everything as if slightly out of focus.

It is a painting done in water colors, Rue thinks. The people are kind and cheerful and greedy by turns, their emotions simple and not well-oiled. Unpolished, like half-finished souls. Some of them she has had actual conversations with, but only on the few days when they seem truly awake.

The only solid people in this country are she and her Prince. And even then, some days she feels herself fading like smoke on the wind. She starts losing her sharp Rue-edges, being worn down to the quiet complacent Princess of the Story.

On days like that she bites and claws, terrified of not being Rue again. The first few times it startles Siegfried, but eventually he begins to understand.

Some days (many days) she stares out into her world and wishes it was not so soft. Some days she wishes for the frenetic life at school, the loud exuberance of Ahiru or the equally difficult glares that Fakir leveled at her.

She wants to feel anger sharp enough to cut, to have her senses overwhelmed by ordinary things (ripe strawberries, crisp and tangy-sweet; rolls of yeasty bread piping-hot), to feel the love that once drove her to her knees with grief.

But her Prince is here. She loves him, as much as one can in this muted world, and she will not leave him. To whom would she go? And she would not be able to bear knowing that she'd given his loneliness back to him.

Rue knows there is beauty in pain: Rue wears toe shoes.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to Ana, for reading this over for me, and Becca for sharing!


End file.
